


Complications and Catches

by Derkish



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Campaign 1 (Critical Role), Female Friendship, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Past Abuse, Post-Canon, Recovery, obligatory side Vex/Percy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:40:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26445760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Derkish/pseuds/Derkish
Summary: Every year, Vex and Keyleth take a week off from their responsibilities to unwind and catch up on the sunny shores of Marquet.  When Vex notices Cassandra having an off day, she invites her (read: drags her) along to join them.  Because Cass really,reallyneeds a vacation.
Relationships: Cassandra de Rolo & Keyleth, Cassandra de Rolo & Percival "Percy" Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III, Cassandra de Rolo & Vex'ahlia, Percival "Percy" Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III/Vex'ahlia
Comments: 57
Kudos: 112





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wrote this fic because…… _Cassandra_.
> 
> Do you ever have those days when your mental health kicks your ass so bad that your sexy sister-in-law and her magic bestie whisk you away to a tropical island and smother you with familial affection until you feel like a vaguely ok person? Asking for a friend.
> 
> The content warnings are about what you would expect: portrayal of depression/anxiety, descriptions/discussions of past emotional/physical abuse and torture, canon-typical violence.

Chapter One

The worst kind of thought was an idle one, and a few of those had been creeping up on Cassandra for days.

She yanked the pull cord and waited. No response.

Cassandra looked up along the scaffolding to where the cord disappeared into the canvas. If the chime was to his right, there was a good chance Percy hadn’t heard it. And as annoyed as she was at the moment, she didn’t think that he would outright _ignore_ her. She pulled the cord again.

At last, a familiar head poked out from beneath the off-white sheets several stories up. When Percy spotted her standing there, he started the long descent down the ladder at a brisk pace, sliding the last few rungs to land gracefully at the bottom.

“Good morning!” he greeted her, removing his goggles. He had a welding smock on over his work clothes, which were already dirty. The gloves he took off and shoved into one pocket were likewise stained; one appeared to be smoking slightly.

“I pity you sometimes, Percival,” Cassandra said, with heavy sarcasm. “Running a one-man artist’s guild and single-handedly repopulating the de Rolo bloodline. However do you handle the responsibility?”

At first Percy seemed amused by the comment, but as he was about to quip back at her, he hesitated. She saw him take in her tense posture, the expectant pause that she’d let hang just a hint too long without breaking into a smirk. His head tilted to one side.

“Are you all right?” Percy said, abruptly concerned. “Is this about the council meeting today?”

“It’s almost noon. The meeting is over.”

The words took a few seconds to process. To Percy’s merit, once they did, he looked properly startled.

“I’m... sorry,” he said, aghast. “I must have lost track of time.”

Cassandra flung her arm to point at the top of the scaffolding. “You are literally inside a giant clock that chimes every bloody hour.” She pointed to his arm. “You have a clock on your _wrist_ that ticks. Incessantly.”

She didn’t wait for further assurances or explanations. Cassandra turned on her heel and started back toward the castle’s main entrance, leaving Percy dumbfounded at the foot of his art project. There was a short delay in the sound of his footfalls catching up before he reappeared.

“Cass.” Percy stepped in front of her, cutting off her path to the foyer, hands held up between them without touching her. “What is it?”

“I specifically asked you to be there,” she snapped. “And you weren’t.”

His attendance didn’t have any relevance to the substance of the meeting. That wasn’t what this was about. Percy hadn’t been scheduled to talk, and she hadn’t even expected him to contribute. It wasn’t even about the principal of the thing.

“I’m sorry I missed the meeting. It won’t happen again. But…”

Percy could see it, and she hated that he could: _I needed you beside me today, and you weren’t there_. Cassandra looked away, shaking her head, livid at the tears that threatened, and the way she had to bite the inside of her lip to keep it from trembling.

“I’m sorry,” he said for the third time.

“It doesn’t matter now. Just… don’t do it again.”

Cassandra walked off before he could pry any further. She didn’t have the fortitude for that conversation right now.

* * *

Cassandra had collected herself by the afternoon (except for a pulsing headache) and was well into a treasury report when the interruption came. The knock at her chamber door didn’t surprise her considering the circumstances, but seeing Vex there did. She was still dressed in the formal clothes she’d worn to present to the council this morning, her hair in a perfect, straight braid.

“I see you’ve been talking to my brother,” said Cassandra, glancing up from her desk.

“Multiple times a day, actually. May I come in?”

At Cassandra’s resigned nod, Vex closed the door behind her and leaned against it, her posture the perfect picture of casual fatigue.

“You handled the meeting flawlessly,” Vex said. “No one could have known that something was wrong.”

Cassandra waved it off, already embarrassed enough from her outburst this morning. “It was nothing.”

“What did you think of Vedmire’s construction report?”

“Perfectly adequate, for a brute,” Cassandra said stiffly. She felt a stab of annoyance at Vex’s intuition, followed by a much smaller twinge of gratitude. “I should have had Grog cut his head off before he became useful.”

“It’s a little late for that now.”

Cassandra went for the teapot on her desk, eager to fix her hands and eyes on something that wasn’t trying to look through her. She started to pour herself a cup of tea, but then she set it aside with a sigh. There was no use in avoiding the discussion, and a tenth cup of tea wasn’t going to clear her headache, anyway.

“Listen, if this is about Percival, I’ll apologize to him later—”

“That’s not why I’m here,” Vex interjected. “I wanted to invite you to join me and Keyleth tomorrow.”

“Oh.” The surprise struck her momentarily dumb. “That’s... I thought that trip was just for the two of you.”

“Historically, yes, but we talked it over, and we want you to come.”

“Why?”

Vex looked at her with more knowing than Cassandra liked. “Because it’s been months since you had some time off, and… it might help.”

Cassandra blinked. “I don’t need a vacation.”

“Well _I_ do,” Vex countered. “And so does Keyleth. You know, the leader of the whole Air Ashari.”

Cassandra rubbed her temples. Was it her personal mission today to alienate the entire family? It was bad enough to scold her brother, who had never once missed a meeting if she asked him to be there.

“I apologize, Vex’ahlia. That was rude of me. And it was very kind of you to offer; I know that trip is important to you.”

“So will you come?”

“I… can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because, I can’t just—” Cassandra gestured around to the stacks of parchment and unanswered post on her desk, “—leave everything unattended.”

“Sure you can. I do it every year. Multiple times a year. Just cancel your biggest appointments and have Percy handle the rest until you get back.”

“I’m sure that will thrill him.”

Percy’s enthusiasm for governance was tepid at best. She would never understand how someone with enough patience to manage five children under the age of seven could have so little to spare for a table of adults with concrete, urgent problems that needed solving. 

“It will thrill him to know that you’re taking care of yourself.”

Cassandra didn’t answer. She expected Vex to keep trying to convince her, but she just stood there, looking back at her. She couldn’t tell whether it was concern, or a challenge, or something in between.

“Well…” Cassandra ventured, once she could no longer bear the silence. “What do you even do on this trip?”

Vex shrugged one shoulder. “Depends… some combination of eating, drinking, and lying around on the beach. Pike usually stops in for brunch one day, which is always fun. Last year I was pregnant, so we didn’t leave the house much. But sometimes we hit the town, do a little window shopping, take a hike or two.” She laughed to herself. “One year we got super drunk and cried for a whole night… But we try not to do that,” she added quickly. “It’s fun, I promise.”

“That’s quite the endorsement,” said Cassandra, returning to her papers. “I’ll think about it.”

Vex opened the door to leave. “Well think fast, because we leave tomorrow morning. And Cass—” She paused halfway out of the room. “This is not a pity invitation, so don’t treat it like one.”

* * *

Cassandra had a bedroom, a study, and a room that she didn’t have a name for. She’d have called it a torture chamber if she had the stomach for melodrama. Nobody knew about that room, because more or less everyone who had been a part of that escapade was dead. Everyone except a certain goliath that she had seen today, of all days. Not that he knew one date from another—or that even if he did, that it would make a lick of difference to him.

The would-be “torture chamber” wasn’t even a torture chamber anymore, either. It was the office they lent to visitors who needed a private space to work. Emissaries and the like. Vex and Percy would have converted it into a room for one of the children if Cassandra hadn’t pointed out its many faults.

“There’s no fireplace, and the corner rooms get so cold at night,” she’d said. “Plus, there’s only one small window, and it doesn’t get any sunlight during the winter months.”

Both of these problems were true, but the real trouble for Cassandra was that window. It was one of the tall and skinny ones, little more than an arrow slit really, and it perfectly centered on a patch of grass at the base of the tower.

Cassandra still poked her head in that room from time to time. She did it that very night, after Vex had left her to her paperwork, and sat on the edge of the desk where her bed used to be. She wondered about that, sometimes—why they’d given her a bed and a room in the castle, when the prison cells would have served just as well. All part of the plan, she supposed.

This was the trouble with vacation. If Cassandra filled her head with the city’s problems, then there was no room left for her own. More to the point: even if she could conceivably have problems in this miraculous life she’d somehow scraped together, she couldn’t _complain_ about them. The things that kept her up at night had every right to do so. She had no business pitying herself after everything she’d done. Half of survival had been learning to live with that. Her own problems couldn’t (or shouldn’t) be solved anyway, so why lend them the headspace? The city had so very many, she could spend the rest of her life working and never fix them all.

It was not the healthiest coping mechanism, but it was certainly productive. If she took that away, there was suddenly room for much more.

When things were good—and they usually were—it was easy for Cassandra to tell herself that the bad feelings would always pass when they did return. She didn’t delude herself with the promise that she would never have stretches of bad days. She was a pragmatist in the classic de Rolo fashion, not so fanciful and dramatic as her brother (who saw himself as a pragmatist, but was more optimistic than she ever hoped to be. She loved him for that perhaps more than anything.). 

No matter how long she went without a stretch like this one—days on end filled with a constant sense of anxious, hopeless dread—she knew it would always return eventually. It was a part of life that she would have to live with forever, because she had the luxury of living. There never was a warning; she’d awake one morning and find it lying beside her on the bed, pouting like a scorned lover, running cold fingers down her ribs. _You’re mine, Cass_. Cassandra could usually chase it off without anyone knowing it was there, with the exception of Percival. And Vex, apparently.

This time had been no different. Two days ago, she’d woken up, and there it was. The same old cycle, repeating itself again. Cassandra found herself unable to fixate on anything but the irrevocable past. Everything she couldn’t take back. And this time, strangely, a few things she had left behind.

The loose floorboard in the closet popped open as easy as ever. Cassandra reached inside and pulled out the notebook, coughing slightly as a cloud of dust puffed up in her face. The leather notepad still had her blue silk ribbon tied around it, though the color of the ribbon had faded and one end had partially frayed. She brought it back to the desk and took the cover off of her lantern. She loosened the knot and pulled the ribbon free from the notebook, then singed the loose ends to stop it from unraveling further. Her fingers burned pinching out the flame before it could catch.

Cassandra smoothed out the ribbon and laid it lengthwise across the desk, conscious of the notebook sitting just to the right of the lantern. Every few months she felt the call to it. Not an arcane call, or a divine call, but a call nonetheless. This was the closest Cassandra had ever come to answering. She was almost disappointed to find the book still waiting for her in that nook.

She ran a finger across the leather front, feeling the places where she’d dented it years ago while trying to stash it in a hurry. She had thought maybe that she’d feel flushed or nervous at the notion of opening it, but this was worse: the numb ringing that had built up in her head didn’t change at all.

Cassandra opened to a random paragraph on a random page. The neat handwriting seemed so out of place against the chaotic words, like a prayer for normalcy. She could envision the teenage girl sitting on the end of the bed, back pressed to the wall, writing out each line with such care. None of the entries had dates because she hadn’t had a way of keeping track for certain. Her best estimate was a line of short hash marks that took up most of the inside front cover.

> _. . . They are finally letting me sleep. I never thought I could miss it so much after all the sleeping I did a few weeks ago. I was afraid I might never get a full night’s rest again. I’m so relieved. I’m not sure how many days it has been since I last wrote. I was so tired I thought I might lose my mind. . ._

They never knocked or made themselves known before coming into this room. She’d never been sure whether they did it to terrorize her, or if they were just plain rude. It always seemed to happen when she was trying to nap. There was nothing quite like settling into what promised to be a restful sleep, only to hear the crack of a solid oak door against stone, three paces from your head. Sometimes she still woke up like that, full-on adrenaline rush with her arms held up to shield her face, only to find herself alone in her bedchamber.

Cassandra turned back several pages, in search of a specific entry. She found it about a dozen pages in:

> _I don’t know how to say this, or where to even start. Some things I cannot put in writing at all. But here is one thing: today, I am convinced that I am alive. I’ve been so sick these past days. I know they must have heard me calling out for help, but I have not seen a single person, not even the Briarwoods. It must just be my punishment for running away. The places where they broke the arrows off were starting to smell, and I was worried that they might let me die in this room. The fever is finally gone now that the doctor came to see me. I feel fully awake for the first time, but I don’t know what to do. I cannot think straight with the crows outside shrieking and fighting at the base of the tower. I cannot bring myself to look, poor Vesper. I feel like such a coward. There is no one I can trust. But I outsmarted them once… there must be a way._

Impassively, Cassandra skipped over the next few entries until she found one where the writing looked somewhat different. 

> _I cannot feel my right arm. As I write this (left-handed, as you can tell), I fear it may be broken. I do not know why they are so angry with me. All I ever do is sit here. I don’t speak to anyone, or ask for anything, or do anything wrong. Nobody even asks me for any information. It makes no difference to them if I cry or not. What have I done? I don’t understand. Where are the Briarwoods? I have been talking to the Dawn Father every morning for his help. So far nothing. I wish I had listened more in my lessons about the gods, I must not be doing it right._

She turned the page.

> _I have been paying close attention these past few days, and I am beginning to wonder whether the Briarwoods are even here anymore. Is it possible that they left? Why would they go through all of this if they didn’t plan to take up the castle? And why keep me in this room, just to hurt me? I heard Anders out in the hall, asking the goliath that guards the door whether he had heard about the next move. I must find out what that means, even if I have to speak to the doctor. I’ve seen her a few times, and yesterday she told Anders that I would have to do, even though I’m “the stupid one.” She said I wasn’t her first choice, but she had other uses for me. What does that mean? I should have this figured out by now. Maybe I am stupid._

Flipping past the next few entries, which detailed the fruitless plan to cobble together an escape, Cassandra paused to scan over part of an entry towards the middle:

> _. . . she showed me what it looked like beforehand. It was a chunk of glass, but it was this green color I had not seen before. She said she made it herself here in Whitestone. She told me not to touch the site or she would have to start all over again, but the stitches itch terribly. Once she finishes her tests she said she would take it out. What could she possibly want to know? It never helps to ask, so now I just wait. It will be over soon. I have to believe it. I have been praying for guidance, but still haven’t seen any signs . . ._

Cassandra skipped to the last entry with mounting dread. Like the others since her capture and confinement, this final note had no indication of the month, year, or day. But unlike with the other entries, she knew the date of this one, because later that day, when she left this chamber and returned to her own bedroom for the first time, a servant told it to her.

> _I heard today that I would be allowed to leave this room. I would not have believed it, but I heard it from the Briarwoods themselves. It was nothing like I expected. I cannot remember all of the details of our conversation, even as I write them now I forget parts. They came by while Horace was on watch. But they seemed so shocked to see me, and so badly hurting. Lady Briarwood even cried! And Lord Briarwood was so angry. He asked Horace how they could treat an honored guest so shamefully, and then he took out his blade and cut him down right in front of me. Lady Briarwood unshackled my hands and told me they had left instructions to care for me in their absence. I don’t know how that could be true, but she seemed so earnest. She promised that I never have to set foot in this room again. I will have the right to go anywhere in the castle that I please._

> _I am so relieved. I know I don’t have full knowledge of what’s happening here, but as long as I mind myself, it will not matter. I will have my old room and all of my things. There is only one thing that frightens me. Lady Briarwood said that before I can leave here, they will need an assurance that I do not stray too far. It sounded like a ritual of some sort. I promised that I would stay without it, but she seemed convinced that it was necessary. She was rather calm about it. I shall just have to be brave. Whatever it takes, I will do it._

On this exact day, all those years ago, Cassandra had taken her first steps out of this very room. In reality, the ritual hadn’t been half as bad as some of the torment she’d undergone in here. Vedmire had held her down while Ripley and Delilah completed the ritual, but it had hardly been necessary. She had cooperated, too afraid of unintentionally changing their minds about letting her go, and too weak to struggle anyway. Cassandra wondered—again, uselessly—whether Vedmire had any notion that today was the anniversary. Whether he had looked at her during today’s presentation and remembered a starved girl shedding silent tears while he pressed one indifferent forearm into her throat.

Cassandra closed the book, feeling sick. It was last entry. Everything had changed from that point forward, Cassandra most of all. She’d no longer had a need to plot and sift through her wounded feelings; the guards had dragged a bloodied child into the room on the brink of death, and months later, someone else had walked out on her own two feet.

As for the first few pages… it always seemed too soon to look. Even now, Cassandra couldn’t do it. She wanted to. She slipped her thumb under the cover and almost flipped it open, but then she changed her mind.

She contemplated the book for a few long seconds before she stashed it in her pocket. Then she rose, stretched, and sighed in resignation.

The beach, then.

* * *

“Good morning, everyone!”

Keyleth’s arrival through the Sun Tree always brought some level of celebratory chaos, so the only thing about it that struck Cassandra as unusual was the outfit. Keyleth had her hair tied up in a loose knot, a pair of glasses with rose-tinted lenses perched on top of her head, and wore a flowy floral dress with matching sandals. Cassandra suspected, without looking closer to inspect, that the little sunflowers on each of her shoes were actually real.

The only thing Keyleth had brought with her was a backpack made from woven palm leaves, which she dropped unceremoniously to the ground to dole out her greetings. She hugged each of the children in turn, sharing in their delight without seeming to notice that everyone else was bundled up against the cold.

“I remember when we were your favorites,” Percy lamented as Keyleth was fawning over the baby in his arms.

“Aww, me too!” She framed Percy’s face in her hands and planted a kiss on his forehead. “Are we ready to go, ladies?”

Behind her, Vex was struggling to extricate herself from the twins that had attached themselves to her legs. “Everyone say goodbye to Trinket! If you’re good, he’ll bring you back lots of presents.”

Cassandra had been standing off to the side with her bag slung over her shoulder, watching the display alongside Trinket and Vesper. She watched as Vesper scratched Trinket’s nose and leaned in close to whisper, “Bring me back a pink seashell, okay buddy?”

Vesper dissolved into giggles as Trinket licked her ear with a force that almost knocked her over.

“I see you’ve packed everything you own,” said Percy, sidling up alongside Cassandra and patting the bag on her shoulder, which was hardly bigger than a bedroll.

“Just the essentials.” That included a stack of paperwork from her desk, along with a series of scrolls depicting new construction in the town square that needed her attention. But Percy didn’t need to know that.

“Good. Vex has her upgraded earring, so you can reach me if you need to. It only works once a day, though. For ten minutes.”

“Use it to contact me if anything comes up, or if you have any questions about your itinerary.” Cassandra looked the group over, overwhelmed on his behalf. “You’re going to have a lot on your plate while we’re gone.”

“Oh, it’ll be fun,” Percy said cheerfully. “I have something for you, by the way.”

With an infant balanced on one hip, he had to maneuver around to reach his back pocket. He handed her a slim leather case, and a pair of roughly circular glasses with tinted lenses slid out into her palm. They looked much the same as Keyleth’s, but gold instead of pink.

“Marquesian sun will get to you if you’re not careful.”

“Thank you…” Cassandra pocketed the gift with yet another pang of guilt. “Percival, can we be good de Rolos and pretend that yesterday never happened?”

“Only if you forgive me.”

“Oh, please,” she sighed. “There’s nothing to forgive.”

Keyleth had finally managed to pry the children off of Vex. She straightened up, breathing heavily from the effort, still smiling broadly. “Time to go!”

Cassandra turned back to Percy. “I’ve cleared most of the schedule for the week, but you’ll have to handle a few smaller tasks,” she said quickly. “There’s the matter of the inn downtown, and then you’ll need to preside over the farmers’ commission meeting. They haven’t resolved their debate about grazing rights, so things have gotten somewhat tense. Please do your best not to offend anyone.”

“You _would_ save the commission for me, wouldn’t you?”

“I saved it _especially_ for you, because I know how much you love listening to farmers squabble about which hogs get to eat the best grass.”

“I hope you get a sunburn.”

“If you muck it up, I swear you’ll never hear the end of it. From me, specifically.”

Cassandra tapped her cheek with one finger, and Percy kissed it obligingly.

“Don’t drown,” he taunted, then left her to say goodbye to Vex.

The rest was the shuffle of departure. Keyleth waited to part the Sun Tree until all the children were accounted for, with Percy holding on to those most likely to sprint after them. Keyleth led the way, followed by Trinket, then Vex, who blew them all kisses over her shoulder. Cassandra was last. She didn’t have time to hesitate, so she gripped her bag tightly and hurried off after the others, through the portal and into the warm sea air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all it’s official…… I’ve written over 100k words of de Rolo angst in one year. Somebody hold me.
> 
> I wanted to write a post-canon fic where Cassandra gets to unpack some of her trauma, but in, like… a pretty place. And it was also important to me that she gets to contemplate and address her mental health in a context where she is seen by her peers and subordinates as successful, articulate, and functional (if not well adjusted). The anime beach episode trope is great IMO because it contrasts a beautiful and lush environment against the ANGST of EXISTENCE and stuff. 
> 
> Title is from NIN’s [Into the Void](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz-fYWDRubk) which has the lyrical and musical tone that vibed with me while writing out this thing.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and I hope you’ll stay with me!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back! I told myself I would make the next fic shorter... and technically it is overall shorter, but this chapter is still like 5,600 words. WHOOPS. It's also the longest chapter, so bear with me!

Chapter Two

The house was bigger than she expected. Percy always referred to it as _quaint_ , which had left her expecting a wooden shack on the beach. But as Keyleth and Vex walked her up to the second story, Cassandra suddenly realized she was the last in on an open secret. 

“There’s two sides to the house,” Keyleth was saying as they reached the top of the spiral staircase. “Beach side and forest side. This bedroom is yours for the week…”

“Beach side, I see.”

“Mhmm. Vex and Trinket are next door, and I’m just across the hall. I like the greenery on that side, ya know? But it’s still nice because you can hear the ocean from anywhere, even in my room.”

Cassandra didn’t doubt it. Across the bamboo floors of her assigned bedroom, the open balcony doors looked straight out to the ocean, a bright blue expanse dotted with distant ships. She’d have almost believed she was looking at a painting, but for the movement of the sheer curtains in the breeze.

“You share this place with all of Vox Machina?” Cassandra asked, examining a piece of artwork on the wall. It was an abstract painting, a little sloppy, and she couldn’t tell whether it was intentionally amateurish or something one of the homeowners had whipped up.

“We cycle through it. Different groups at different times. I think Vex and Percy come with the kids at least once a year, right? I’m surprised you never joined them.”

“They’ve invited me, but they don’t often have their own space…”

“Yeah, I forget sometimes that castle living isn’t exactly private, is it?”

“Not hardly. So who were the last ones here?”

“Hmm, Tary and Lawrence, maybe?” Keyleth turned around and hollered out the door. “Hey, Vex!”

The answer rang up from below: “What?”

“Who was here last?”

“I think it was the gnomes.”

“Oh… In that case, let me just…” Keyleth ran her hands across the bed’s coverlet, flipped it down, and inspected the sheets before returning everything to its place. Then she straightened up, smiling in satisfaction. “Okay, we’re good. Once you’re all unpacked, let’s meet up downstairs so we can figure out what we’re doing.”

Cassandra knew that she had missed something, but decided she would sleep better in the bed if she didn’t know. “Thank you, I’ll be right down.”

Cassandra waited until she could hear the two other women chatting in the kitchen before she set her bag down on the bed and opened it up in search of the task list she’d prepared the day before. She told herself there was no need to feel so sneaky about it; no one had told her she couldn’t work if she _wanted_ to. For once she didn’t have any deadlines or council members breathing down her shirt—just the weight of that notebook in her pocket. And the noise rising in the back of her head like a buzzing wasp. She might as well use the time to accomplish a few of those nagging tasks.

Cassandra flipped open her bag in search for her work supplies, only to find them missing. Where they ought to have been, she instead found a first edition copy of _The Daring Trials and Tribulations of Sir Taryon Darrington_.

That brat.

* * *

The entire lower level was an open sprawl of a kitchen, dining, and living area that stepped right off into the sand. It barely passed as being inside if you opened all the folding doors. Everyone gathered up around the enormous wooden table that served as the room’s centerpiece. Cassandra ran her fingers along its edge as she found her seat. The carvings were stunningly ornate. And actually, as she took a more thorough pass over the room, all of the furniture had the same exquisite quality. Every chair, end table, and lounger looked to be a first-class antique.

“Pretty cool, right?” said Vex, who had been watching her take in the scenery.

“I don’t know that ‘cool’ describes anything in this place, but it’s lovely,” said Cassandra, who could already feel her face flushing from the heat. If it weren’t for the breeze and the strange ceiling fans rotating above her head (enchanted, no doubt, but the craftsmanship had a familiar flair to it), she’d have felt oppressed by the temperature. “What do we do now?”

“Shopping,” Vex said at once.

“But first things first,” Keyleth cut in. She muttered an incantation and Cassandra felt a little tingle in her throat that dissipated almost immediately. “Underwater breathing. It lasts twenty-four hours, but I always recast it at breakfast so we have it going at all times.”

“Very clever,” Cassandra said.

“Hindsight’s always clever,” Vex said lightly. “So, shopping?”

“What exactly are we shopping for?”

Keyleth gestured to the kitchen behind her. “Food. We’ll have most meals here at the house.”

“Maybe get you a cute little swimsuit, Cass,” said Vex, with a wink. “Unless you want to swim naked.”

What few summer gowns Cassandra owned from childhood she had outgrown and not replenished. The clothes she had on now were the closest thing she could find in the archive of Whitney’s closet: capris of a flowy grey fabric and a loose-fitting blouse in white, with sleeves to protect her from the sun. Not half as bright as Vex and Keyleth in their dresses, but it would serve.

“I brought everything I need, but thank you for offering.”

“Do you have a hat?” Keyleth asked pointedly.

“I—no,” Cassandra admitted. “I hadn’t thought to bring one. It’s a good idea, though.”

Cassandra soon wished she _had_ brought a hat, because the walk to the town and market took longer than she would have guessed. She hadn’t had a sense of how isolated they were out here until she started looking around for civilization. The route started off with a twenty-minute stroll along the white beach before they finally reached a stretch of sand where their own footprints weren’t the only ones. After a few minutes of that, with still no people nearby, they turned off the beach and into the woods, where they followed a well-worn path that eventually dumped them out into the middle of a busy fishing village.

Keyleth seemed to know everyone there, and only a few townspeople seemed alarmed at the sight of a bear trailing behind their group. Vex dragged Cassandra off to a clothing shop, leaving Keyleth in animated discussion with an old woman selling fish out of a cart.

By the time Keyleth found them again, Cassandra had on a woven hat with a wide, floppy brim, like the one the gardener wore in Whitestone while pruning hedges. At the moment, it was serving as a shield for her face while Vex argued with a merchant about the price of mangoes. She’d have hid behind Trinket, but that wasn’t very subtle.

“Hey, good news,” Keyleth said as she jogged over, “Selene’s going to take us fishing tomorrow!”

“Oh Keyleth, we’ve been in Marquet for less than an hour and you’re already filling up our schedule,” Vex moaned, heaving one of the two grocery baskets into Cassandra’s arms, and not noticing when Cassandra almost buckled from the weight. “Aren’t we supposed to be relaxing this week?”

“Fishing sounds relaxing,” said Cassandra, who had only gone fishing once, with Ludwig, and begged him to take her home after about an hour of boredom. She didn’t see why Vex would be exasperated about the three of them sitting around in wicker chairs while trout nibbled at their fishing hooks.

“It’s not. You’ll see.”

“It _is_ fun, though.”

Their shopping done, they headed back toward the line of forest where they’d emerged before. Cassandra was worried that they were going to lug their groceries all the way back, but thankfully, Keyleth opened up a nearby tree and ushered them through it. They reemerged in the garden once more, a few yards from the back of the house.

The rest of that day was spent settling in. Cassandra toured herself around the property while Keyleth and Vex finished setting up their rooms. She walked the perimeter, noting the contrast between the edge of the dark green forest on one side of the house, and the open beach on the other. Inside, she found several of Percival’s touches throughout: a drain in the kitchen washbasin like the ones in some of the newer Whitestone homes, some contraptions for hanging lanterns, and a broken clock that she suspected had been ticking a little too loudly for someone’s nerves. The vacation projects of a restless engineer.

She found more excessive finishes on the upper level. On one far end, tucked away from view of the balconies and the beach, there was a bath. Like the rest of the house, the outermost wall consisted of a pair of doors that folded inward, leaving the entire room open to the air and an unobstructed view of the forest trees. The vanity countertop was patterned with a dark, rough-cut stone that also spanned the floor and rose up in a long, gentle slope to make the shower wall.

There was a tub, of course, even more gratuitous than the ones at home. It was level with the floor, so that one need merely step down into it, and ran right up against that open wall. If she were to take a dip, she could wade to the far end and splash water onto the mossy yard below.

Keyleth found her as she was inspecting the tile work on the edge of the bathtub, struck by the level of detail.

“Did you all build this place?” Cassandra asked.

“We bought it from one of Scanlan’s long-time customers,” Keyleth answered. “The basic structure existed like this, but we added our own flair. Like this shower—check it out. Me and Percy put it together.” She pulled a chain in the shower so water sprinkled down from above like rain. She fastened the chain to a hook to keep the flow moving. “Fresh water collects in a basin on the roof, and we added all these lenses and reflectors that get the water really hot from the sunlight.”

As seemed to be the theme with this place, the shower had no door, and stood both indoors and outdoors at once. Cassandra found the ostentatious flair a little overwhelming. She had a feeling she would spend the majority of any shower glancing over her shoulder into the dense trees, looking out for voyeurs who would not to be there.

* * *

Simply changing locations wouldn’t make her mind right, but she’d hoped it might help shake off that listlessness.

Cassandra had stayed up the night before to rearrange her schedule for the week, which paid off in one regard: she fell asleep within moments of pulling back the covers, and slept straight through the night without so much as a dream. And yet, when she awoke at daybreak in the center of her bed, well-rested with her eyes still shut, that feeling remained. It sat on her chest like the calico cat that used to sometimes sleep in her room as a child, curled up and purring. The castle had always had a few cats around to keep out the rodents, and in the wintertime, they would steal in through a cracked bedroom door to share the heat at night. All the cats had disappeared the night the Briarwoods came to call. They had been smarter than every last de Rolo.

_It’s too early for this_ , Cassandra thought.

She liked the morning because it was neutral territory. She would creep over to her bedroom window, quietly, like there was someone else in the room she was afraid to wake, and sit down with that first cup of coffee to watch the sun come up. On a cool morning—and in Whitestone, they were all cool mornings, but on a _particularly_ cool morning—she might wrap herself in a blanket and sit there for an hour, the warm mug held in her hands against the base of her stomach. In those long minutes of silence, before the day’s work or even consciousness fogged up her mind, she just _existed_. Not a victim, or a survivor, or a traitor. Just a person. 

She did the same thing now. Cassandra crept down to the kitchen, fixed herself a cup of tea, and returned to her balcony to watch the color return to Marquet. The notebook was in her bedside table, out of sight since she unpacked it. She felt its presence in the room as if she’d left it on her pillow, and tried to focus on her surroundings instead. The beauty of the shoreline, the incredible detail in the architecture of the home. Even the antique coffee mugs were sculpted with such intricate care that she’d been afraid to use one, for fear of dropping it and destroying the artwork. She peeked at the underside and was startled to see the signature of a well-known craftsman from Wildemount. How much had they spent on this place?

The wind never stopped out here on the water, but it didn’t cut through her like it did back home, just left a sticky feeling on her skin like she’d already taken a dip in the salt water. The sea had a strong briny smell to it, unlike the shores of the Frigid Depths, but different. Maybe it was the humidity. Cassandra sipped her tea slowly, until it had gone lukewarm, then tipped the rest into her mouth. When she finally heard the sound of someone moving about in the hall, she sighed and steeled herself for her first full day of vacation, whatever that might bring.

Not much, it turned out, at least not before lunch. The most interesting thing that happened during the first part of the day was the three of them putting breakfast together, which was uneventful (though not without a shared laugh when Cassandra asked to cut fruit because she didn’t know how to fry an egg).

After breakfast, they sat around the table a little longer, sipping orange juice and coffee, until they found their way to the beach and stayed there until lunch. Cassandra handled the first hour well enough, but became restless after a second hour of watching the birds, staring at the rhythmic flow of the waves, and flipping through the more palatable chapters (or paragraphs, really) of Tary’s novel. Vex lay motionless on her towel, face cast in the shade of Trinket’s mass, eyes hidden behind her own pair of tinted glasses. Cassandra couldn’t tell whether she was awake.

At least Keyleth seemed to share Cassandra’s inability to sit still, even if their agitation had vastly different reasons. She dragged out the largest hammock Cassandra had ever seen, took a great deal of time in setting it up, sat in it for all of ten minutes, then announced she was ready for a walk. Cassandra leapt at the chance for activity. Once they’d coaxed Vex off of her towel (it turned out she’d been asleep), they set off along the tide line in the opposite direction from last night.

There was nothing to see but trees on one side and ocean on the other, until a mile stretched past and ended, quite suddenly, at the base of a rocky cliffside. The sprawling expanse of rocks and boulders had such a striking look, so out of place, that Cassandra wondered whether this was where the gods had dumped all the debris they’d excavated while digging out the perfectly flat sand beach.

Keyleth was already climbing up the lowest rocks, which were browned and slippery with seaweed. “Come on, there’s a great spot up a little ways.”

Trinket gave a low, weary groan at the sight of the steep formation. Vex scratched his head and made an attentive little sound. “I know, buddy.” She tapped the pendant that lay atop the front of her dress. “Go on, old man. I won’t judge you.”

The bear disappeared with a bright flash, and Vex touched the necklace again with absent reverence. She looked almost sad, until she noticed Cassandra watching. Then she brightened again, and gestured up to where Keyleth had already somehow managed to reach. “After you!”

Cassandra considered the gradual incline. “You should know, I’m not the best climber.”

“I’ll stick behind and catch you if you fall,” Vex said, and then laughed. “Or you’ll smash into me and we’ll both end up in the ocean.”

The view at the top was worth sliding and scraping her way up the uneven slope. They weren’t particularly high, but from this vantage point, Cassandra could peer over the edge and look almost straight down from fifty feet, a sheer fall give or take a jagged stone jutting from the cliff. She had a renewed appreciation for the color of the sea in this part of the world. It had the perfect color, neither green nor blue, but a strange mix of the two, and clear enough to see the tiny pebbles and shells at the bottom. She was hypnotized watching the way it flowed with each wave, how the water washed into the crevices of the rock and swirled in similar ways, yet different each time, in a ripple of reflected sunlight and foam.

The waves crashed at more or less the same tempo back on the beach, sometimes louder, or softer, but otherwise a perfect metronome. Up here, the waves landed unevenly over some rock faces and not others. They sent a spit of spray into the air, fingers reaching up as if to touch Cassandra where she stood, leaning just slightly over the edge with Vex’s hand on her elbow. A constant sound—retreating, advancing, receding back down over pathways carved into the stone.

“There’s so much sound up here,” she said.

“It’s perfect,” said Vex.

“This is why people love the beach,” Keyleth said. “There’s always sound, but in the background… it fills in all the little gaps in your head.”

“It covers up the noise.”

Vex said it offhand, but the words made Cassandra shiver.

“It does,” Cassandra agreed. The fact of it was more evident now than ever.

* * *

Lunch was followed by more lounging, until a small boat came into view from where they’d sprawled out on the beach.

“Selene’s here!”

Keyleth flung her book aside and took off towards the water with Vex not too far behind, kicking their sandals off without stopping. Trinket chased after them, and Cassandra followed last. The ocean was so warm, it felt like slipping into liquid nothingness, no different than the heat of the air. Not refreshing, per se, but pleasant.

Cassandra was a passable swimmer, but she was still panting by the time Keyleth boosted her onto the deck of the boat with a wave of her hand.

“So,” she said, still out of breath, “that part is why you said fishing wasn’t relaxing, right?”

“No such luck,” said Vex. “But you do get to feel like a mermaid.”

It was, technically speaking, fishing. Though Selene handing her a spear and a pair of flippers came as a surprise, and Cassandra hadn’t expected to find herself ten meters below the surface, either, surrounded by fish twice her size.

Cassandra could handle a dagger and sword well enough, and did her best with the spear, which was weightless but somehow still cumbersome in her hand. She spent more time chasing it down than anything else. In contrast, Keyleth and Vex moved effortlessly about in the water (and Trinket too, who had taken the form of a whale and scared off most of the prey for the first ten minutes). Their bodies were so sturdy and capable. With Cassandra’s wet clothes suspended around her body, she felt diminished by comparison. Gangly but soft, weak.

It wasn’t a fair assessment, and the sense of inferiority wore off once she finally struck a blow.

Keyleth had made it sound like Selene was doing them a favor by taking them out, but after they had heaved their catch onto the boat, it became clear to Cassandra that they were the ones doing a favor. She found herself stumbling back onto land, exhausted and desperately thirsty, the three of them lugging one of the enormous fish behind them.

Keyleth showed her how to filet it while Vex arranged a bonfire. They took their time preparing the meal, picking over fruits and hard cheese while the fish cooked. They each had one glass of wine, and then another with a very early supper.

Cassandra hadn’t thought about the notebook in hours, or the mood that had compelled her to dig it out. She still felt off, but her limbs had become pleasantly heavy, and the fog had cleared from her mind for now. A long day of physical activity had fixed her up nicely, with a little help from a crisp chardonnay.

“How are you enjoying Tary’s book, by the way?” Keyleth asked, as they were settling into their mango tarts.

Cassandra considered the bite on her fork with embellished interest. “It’s… undeniably a book.”

“Aren’t you enjoying it?”

“Not rea—” She hesitated to give her full review. He _was_ one of their closest friends. So instead, she went with a noncommittal, “It’s… you know.”

“I haven’t read it,” Keyleth said.

“Me neither,” said Vex.

“It’s about what you’d expect,” said Cassandra, trying and failing to suppress a laugh. “Not without its surprises, though. I never knew he was responsible for bringing you and Percy together.”

Keyleth choked on her drink. Vex looked like she was trying to decide whether Cassandra had just spoken to her in a different language, or if she was just too drunk to process the words. Eventually she appeared to settle on the latter.

“He what? No, no, you must have misread.”

“Oh, I’m quite confident. He wrote—well, let me just…”

Cassandra retrieved the book and found the chapter she had in mind. “Here we are.” She cleared her throat, encouraged by the looks on Vex and Keyleth’s faces, and read out with a hint of theatrical flair:

> _The half-elf’s infatuation was obvious to me, naturally. I could see the passion stirring behind her visage whenever she beheld the gunslinger’s broad shoulders when he walked, and the way his strong hands handled a wrench with such deft skill. But tragically, my good friend’s wayward advances went unnoticed. Percy and myself had spent countless hours together, brainstorming and building our passions long into the night. His fervent mind was more eager to tackle our latest inventions than become befuddled by the raptures of romance. Indeed, though I implored him to spend more time with the other members of our party, and especially my dear friend, the infatuated nymph of a woman, he declared he only had time for me, Taryon Darrington, and our brainchildren. Inventions come and go, however, but love is eternal. I resolved to kindle that flame between these two friends of mine, and help them achieve the impassioned throes of magic and mystery. They would be married within the year._

Keyleth had her head buried in her arms on the table, the muffled sound of her laughter rising to a howl. Vex hadn’t so much as blushed. She did, however, grab her ear, pause, and then say, “Percy, what the fuck?” A pause. Vex’s expression shifted. “Oh, shit. Did I just wake you up? I’m sorry, I forgot about the time difference! ….No, no, I’m sorry! But… hey. Since you’re up, do you remember talking to Tary about me?”

Keyleth leaned toward Vex, her hands pressed flat against the table. “Weren’t you together already when Tary came along?”

“That’s right!” Vex gasped. “That little fuckwit—no, not you, darling. Listen, I’ve got some questions for you about this book… Tary’s book. Have you read it? … Me neither. But he says—oh. Yes, of course, it can wait. Get some sleep. Sorry again. Goodnight—or morning, or whatever—I love you!”

“Bye, Percy!” Keyleth called out, even though they all knew he wouldn’t hear her.

They all burst into laughter.

Sunset came and went as a relatively tame affair. After nightfall, a few more drinks, and hours of conversation, they each retired to their rooms for the night. Uncomfortable with the feeling of salt and sand clinging all over her skin (even while tipsy), Cassandra took a dip in the massive tub before bed. The water stored on the roof was, as promised, scalding hot—almost too hot, given the oppressive climate, but the cool breeze off the water made it bearable. Cassandra found some scented oils in a cabinet and added a few drops to the bath before she climbed down into it.

The perfumed scent, like lavender, and the wine, and the rhythmic beat of the waves got her eyelids drooping. With the outer wall folded back to open up the room, she dangled her arms over the edge of the tub and looked out with her head under the open sky. Clouds collected above as the minutes passed. By the time Cassandra toweled off and cozied up in bed, rain had started to fall. It was a weighty sound, steady on the sloped roof, a slate of glass beads falling over her window.

* * *

By daybreak, she would never have known it rained. The weather cleared up overnight, leaving behind a perfect Marquet morning.

The long hours passed into the longer hours of the afternoon. Cassandra spent most of them on the beach with Vex and Keyleth, hiding from the sun under the floppy brim of her hat and the glasses that Percival had made for her. They had a nice little setup, with the oversized hammock, lounge chairs, a bucket of ice that Keyleth kept cold all day. When the heat became too much, they waded in the ocean, at times floating, buoyant. They talked about fleeting, unimportant things. At low tide, Cassandra crouched among the tide pools and sifted through the sand in search of pretty shells for Vesper. It was magnificently boring, and yet, something about the sounds of the waves and the tropical birds and the passive breeze kept all of those dark thoughts at bay, as though the sun had burned it off like last night’s clouds. 

She kept fairly well covered up during the day, even while swimming, but there was only so much one could do other than stay indoors, which was out of the question. Cassandra could feel the sunburn setting in by nightfall. That tight, stinging sensation had already begun to set in on the exposed skin of her arms and neck. Vex leaned in for a look when Cassandra pointed it out over supper.

“Oh, you’ve got little freckles coming out, too!” Vex said, tracing a finger over the bridge of her own nose to demonstrate.

Cassandra touched her face, as if she could feel them popping up. “I thought I was being careful.”

“I have it on good authority that they’re cute,” said Keyleth, who always had a sun-kissed look, but had somehow sprung up even more freckles over the course of the day.

Vex nodded in agreement. “The children get them too, when we’re actually somewhere with sun.”

“It’s not the freckles that concern me…” Cassandra rubbed her arms, grimacing. “I’ll be peeling by tomorrow night.”

“No, you won’t!” Keyleth rose from the table, disappeared to her room, and returned with a bottle that she tossed to Cassandra. “Here you go. Rinse off and put this on, and you won’t even turn red. It’s my sea kelp lotion.”

“Really?” Cassandra inspected the opaque glass, impressed. “Who would have known about the healing properties of sea kelp?”

“I think it’s actually the healing properties of the enchantment,” said Vex.

“Ah. That makes more sense.”

“But the kelp does make it smell really good,” Keyleth added.

Cassandra took up the suggestion after they had finished their plates. It was dark now, but she felt her way through the hallway until her hand brushed the doorframe of the bathroom. She had the sensation of being both indoors and outdoors at once as she peeled off her clothes and left them in a pile by the door. She lit a candle, and the light reflected off the tile to fill the room with a soft, yellow glow that didn’t quite reach all the corners. The hum of katydids and cicadas in their neighboring trees seemed natural against the stone floor and the wooden walls. The effect was lost only somewhat when she pulled the cord for the spigot and stepped under the spray.

It had been a good day. A really good day. Cassandra washed her hair and wondered how her brother was faring back home, arms literally full with the jobs of three people. Vex had that earring that let her contact Percy once a day, or the other way around; he hadn’t called, and Cassandra hadn’t seen Vex use it today, but assumed she probably would tonight. Then again, they’d been gone less than two days. How badly could they possibly need to talk—

“Here you go—”

The sound of a sudden voice in the room made Cassandra shriek in alarm, which in turn made the intruder yelp. She whipped around and saw Keyleth halfway through the door with a stack of folded towels spilling from her arms.

“I’m sorry!” Keyleth immediately began to ramble. “I thought you heard me knock! That was so stupid of me, I’m so sorry, Vex told me not to sneak up on you like that—”

“It’s fine,” Cassandra said abruptly, wiping at the soap that had run into her eyes and begun to sting. 

“I was just bringing you a towel, I used the last—”

Keyleth stopped mid-sentence, and Cassandra knew why at once, without looking.

Sure enough, once she’d rinsed enough of the soap from her eyes, she confirmed that Keyleth was staring. Not at her nakedness, or the deep gauges that the arrows had left in her chest, or at the nightmare sprawl of scarring that usually hid beneath her clothes. It was the mark on the left side of her ribcage, bigger than the size of her palm. The circle and the sharp prongs, the dark emerald color that stood out against her skin, clear as day to a half elf in the dark. 

Vex burst into the room, dagger in hand. “What is it?” she demanded. “Why are we screaming?” She looked to Keyleth, who was staring, then to Cassandra, then started to peer around in search of the hidden danger before she did a double take. “What the fuck is _that?_ ”

“It’s not what it looks like,” Cassandra said flatly. She unclipped the pull cord on the shower, and the water stopped, leaving the room eerily quieter than before, more exposed. Absurdly, she had the sudden urge to cover the sigil with her hands. 

“I think it’s exactly what it looks like,” Keyleth said in a low voice. “In… a literal sense. But I assume there’s a story.”

Cassandra nodded, beckoning for one of the towels. Keyleth handed it over, neither one of them advancing any closer to the other. Cassandra took a few long moments to press the soft cloth to her face and wrap it around her, tucking the end under her arms. Her sense of dignity began to return once Vecna’s mark was hidden behind the towel.

“There is a story, but it’s a long one. Coincidentally, the anniversary was just a few days ago…” She let that one linger for Vex to put together. “The short of it is that at the time, it seemed like a very small token for a considerable amount of freedom. It’s enchanted… or it was. I don’t really know what happened now that Delilah’s gone.”

“She fucking _tattooed_ you?” said Vex.

“No, Ripley did. But Delilah enchanted the ink with some kind of… scrying spell, I think. Or something to keep me from leaving the city. I honestly don’t know, because I never tried to leave.” Cassandra was talking too much. She shook her head, flustered. “But regardless, it’s the price I paid to move freely within the castle.”

Cassandra bit back the other prices she’d paid. And the reasons for her freedom: so they could make sure she complied with their plans for the false rebellion. So she would lead them to her brother and his friends if they tried to find her. So she could never leave without worrying that someone might appear over her shoulder. She often dreamed of Delilah Briarwood standing over her bed, her warm grin so painfully assuring.

Keyleth made a disgusted noise. “That’s barbaric.”

Cassandra shrugged off the comment. “She actually asked me. She said if I wanted freedom, it was required, but I didn’t have to.”

“And you agreed?”

Cassandra dared a sarcastic grin. “Of course. And I thanked her for giving me the choice. Compared to what I was used to, it was like a massage… Ripley once sewed a chunk of residuum glass in my leg so she could see whether it affected the impact of spells and potions. That was really something.”

She pulled the towel up enough to flash the scar on the inside of her thigh, a thin line with a faint row of neat suture marks. Say what you would about Anna Ripley, but you had to admit that she was a perfectionist.

“As for this,” said Cassandra, patting her side. “It was nothing at the time. Really, truly nothing.”

Back in the privacy of her room, Cassandra sat down on the edge of the bed, clutching the towel to her chest. She’d never said those things out loud before.

She told herself it didn’t matter. But she was shaking, and somehow, for some reason, it did. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! See ya next time.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter three! In which things happen. And stuff.

Chapter Three

On the fourth day, it rained. Cassandra lay listening to the storm roll in long after waking.

Last night’s conversation had left a small pit of nausea in her gut. The sheets had tangled all around her, but it was a soft, comforting weight. Cassandra didn’t try to free herself. The world wasn’t dangerous outside her room, but the notion of confronting it just filled her with… dread. Dread of the awkwardness that would surely crowd her interactions with Vex and Keyleth, dread of confirming that she’d ruined their vacation with the black cloud of her depression. Dread of the tremendous effort of getting out of bed, when every limb weighed a hundred stone and her jaw clenched at the notion of shedding tears.

Somehow, her time in captivity had pushed back into the forefront of her mind, where it sat, obstinate. Cassandra bristled at the thought of the people who had uprooted her life and shook her down for every ounce of humanity she’d had left. Curse Ripley and the Briarwoods and every person who’d stood complacent while she sat wounded in that room, with her eldest sister rotting outside the window, until she’d have killed anyone—and everyone—for an iota of freedom.

And of course, most of all, damn her traitor body for being too weak to fight, and her resolve for reconciling the choices.

Cassandra didn’t pity herself. If she could step outside her body and read its history like a story in a book, she knew she’d be the villain. Inciting riots, passing bad information to innocent people in order to ensure that their rebellion was a mass suicide. Fodder for the army. All those people dead, and why? For what? They hadn’t even promised to let her go. She’d just done it. 

A knock cut her out of her brooding, so soft that she almost dismissed it as imagination. The door edged open a crack, and Vex’s voice came whispering through. “Cass, are you awake?”

The cloud dispersed as Cassandra blinked, almost like she’d been asleep. “Come in.”

Vex backed into the room with a tea tray balanced in her hands.

“I’m sorry, have I overslept?”

“Overslept for what? There’s nowhere to go in this weather—not that we had plans anyway. And Keyleth says this will probably go all day.”

Vex was moving about the room like it was hers instead of Cassandra’s. She drew the drapes back to cast a grey-blue light into the room, opened the balcony doors, arranged the tray of fruit and tea outside. Cassandra sat up and watched her, rubbing her eyes to clear away some of the drowsiness.

“Where is Keyleth?”

“Oh, who knows. Gardening, I think.”

“In this?” She pictured Keyleth on her knees in the garden, digging through the mud, oblivious to the torrential downpour. The sound of the rain pounding the roof overhead made it almost comical.

“She’s got these plants that you can only harvest on, like, cloudy days or in the rain or something,” Vex said, with a shrug that almost spilled the fruit off the plate she was holding. “But luckily, I’m not Keyleth, and neither are you, so we get to stay dry with our breakfast. She’ll show up eventually anyway to re-cast underwater breathing.”

Cassandra joined Vex outside under the protective cover of the balcony’s overhang, where the drips of rain couldn’t quite reach them. They sat on a pair of oversized cushions with the tray of tea and fruit between them. Trinket appeared shortly after they settled down and curled up next to Vex, unbothered by the thunder.

They kept quiet longer than usual. Cassandra watched the storm rage out over the ocean, but she could see Vex in her periphery, doing the same. She couldn’t tell whether Vex was waiting for her to say something, or just enjoying the quiet. Cassandra tried to enjoy it, too, but there was just too much going on.

“How many years will it take?” she asked aloud, eyes still fixed beyond the balcony. “I’ll be thirty soon, did you know that?”

“You poor thing,” said Vex.

“It should be behind me by now, but it’s not,” Cassandra went on. “Every time I feel myself slipping into one of these slumps, I ask, ‘why are you still like this?’ Everyone else is over it, so why not me?”

“That’s not true. It’s just that pretty much everyone from that time frame is dead, and you’re not.” At Cassandra’s persistent silence, Vex sighed and shook her head. “I know that doesn’t change anything… I wish I could be more helpful.”

“There’s nothing to be helped, I’m afraid,” Cassandra said. “Life is so much better than I’d have dreamed it could be. I have my health, a fulfilling job with real purpose. I have you, and my brother, and five nieces and nephews that I love more than I thought I could love anything. I have more than any reasonable person deserves. But sometimes it… doesn’t matter.”

When Vex sad nothing, Cassandra tilted her head to catch her eye, but Vex was looking far off, chewing thoughtfully on a piece of fruit.

“I never did face justice for the things I did. I’ve worked it all out, logically. Everything that happened. I understand that—”

“—it wasn’t all your fault?” Vex said pointedly.

“Right. So they say. So _I_ say,” Cassandra repeated, with a little more force.

“There you go. Repetition and time, right?”

“Maybe. I don’t know… It’s all right, though.”

“Not today, maybe. But it will be. Tomorrow, or in a week. It always does get better, doesn’t it?”

Vex smiled at her in a way they conveyed more understanding than Cassandra liked.

“What you said the other day, out on the cliffs…” Cassandra trailed off.

“What,” said Vex, “you think you’re the only one?”

“No, I just… thought you all had gotten better.”

“I have. And so’s Percy. And everyone else. But if you think you’re the only one who goes through periods like this, well—I’m sorry to break it to you, love, but you’re in good company with us. All in varying degrees, of course,” said Vex, patting Trinket on the head, “and different ways of dealing with it, when we aren’t governing or parenting or whatever.”

“Typically I just ignore it.”

“Does that work?”

“Sure, given enough time…”

Vex contemplated that. “Honestly… it took me years to accept that working things out alone wasn’t always going to do the job. Sometimes when you reach out to someone, even if you don’t get anything out of it in the way of—of advice, or anything like that, just having it in the air instead of in your head makes all the difference.”

“Are you saying I need to start talking about my feelings?” Cassandra said, half teasing.

Vex laughed, catching Cassandra off guard. “I’m not telling you to do shit,” she said. “Everyone’s different; we all need different things at different times. But… you’re my sister, so. Whatever you need, is yours.”

* * *

The general gloom of the weather carried on for the rest of the day, though the rain let up enough for them to venture out around supper time. The town wasn’t a major tourist attraction, but being inhabited primarily by fisherfolk and sailors meant that the taverns were just a raucous as any they’d find in a resort village.

Again, Keyleth seemed to know everyone, which made Cassandra question how much time she spent around here. And her general friendliness made the barkeep less wary when they showed up with a large bear in tow and asked for a seat by the stage, where a band had set up to play—a fife and drummer with a fiddle. The musicians started up as the three of them took their seats between two other crowded tables. A young couple the next table over squawked in alarm as Trinket pushed past their chairs to keep close to Vex, but nobody paid them any mind, least of all Vex.

“This band is really good!” Keyleth assured them as the music began to swell.

Cassandra had to almost shout to hear herself. “Are you in town often?”

“Oh, every few weeks. Just to check on my plants—and for oysters! You _have_ to try the oysters here, and the tuna. And… hmm… the greenfin is pretty good, too. I think it’s a shark, actually—”

“Why don’t you order for us, Keyleth?” Vex said.

“Great idea! Maybe we can do like a shared platter kind of thing?”

“Seafood charcuterie board, why not?”

“A little of everything,” Cassandra agreed.

That turned out to be the understatement of the night. Their waitress already had a sheen of sweat on her brow from ferrying about the other tables, but it took her two trips alone to fill up theirs. The fare was simple, mostly seafood, varied and fresh. There was thin-sliced tuna on a bed of grains. Breaded fish with a roulade that you could dip. Oysters and little necks and softshell crab and about eight different kinds of bite-sized cuts of raw or seared fish neatly arranged on a decorative plate with little garnishes. The sheer variety was enough to make Cassandra forget she’d lost her appetite.

And of course, there was wine—different kinds for different combinations of food, and local beer to fill in where the wine wouldn’t do. Not much of a drinker, Cassandra started slow and let the first glass ease her inhibition into the second, and so on. None of them had quite the tolerance of their adventuring years, and it showed. Vex was pink in the face before she finished her second glass, and Keyleth kept asking whether it was getting hot in here.

“Blame the performers!” Cassandra said, voice already raw from shouting through dinner.

The music had really picked up, and those that weren’t too drunk or too busy eating were dancing at the bottom of the elevated stage, right by their table. More than once Cassandra had to save her glass from the wayward elbow of someone too immersed in their dancing for manners. She’d have felt a little claustrophobic if it weren’t for the alcohol, which had her nodding and tapping her hand on the table instead. Keyleth noticed.

“Want to dance, Cass? I’ll come with you!”

Cassandra laughed, her self-awareness returning. “Thank you, but I don’t dance.”

“Don’t lie!” Vex chimed in. “I heard a rumor that you used to be quite the little dancer… following around every bard who came to call at the castle when you weren’t falling out of trees in the garden.”

“I don’t know where you could have possibly gotten _that_ intelligence, but I assure you, he’s not to be trusted.”

“Is that so?” said Vex, tucking her hair back on one side to flash her enchanted earring. “I haven’t used my charge today—maybe we should give him a call and verify that?”

“Very well, fine!” Cassandra said hastily, not eager to field a taunting call from Percival when she could hear the words slurring worse and worse as they left her mouth. “I’ll remind you that I was a teenager, but I did love music.”

“Don’t you still?”

The thought had never occurred to her, at least not in this frame of mind, and it gave her some pause. “Well I—yes. I s’pose I do.”

The scrape of Keyleth’s chair was even louder against the wood floor as she shot up out of it. “Let’s go. I really need to dance the alcohol out of my system.”

Vex stood up on Cassandra’s other side. “Not sure that’s how it works, darling, but I like your enthusiasm.”

They each took Cassandra by one arm and half-dragged her to the center of the floor, leaving Trinket alone with their food as a misguided choice of a table guard. Cassandra was not a very good dancer, but then, as she suddenly recalled, she never had been. She had forgotten that those moments from her childhood had ever happened, and her recall was like she’d only ever heard them secondhand—like she and Percival had read the same book, and his memory called back her memory of the same story.

The dance floor was crowded before the Cassandra, Vex, and Keyleth joined it, leaving little room for identity crisis. She set it aside and did her best not to think too hard about whether the movements felt familiar.

Cassandra did have fun—more than her skills reflected—but she was also the only one with enough sensibility left to call it quits for the group. She dragged the others back to the table for a glass of water and some more food, only to find the food gone and Trinket licking soy glaze off his paws. The wine was still there, so they had that instead (she had forgotten about the water) until it, too, was gone, and the time had come to stumble back home.

The music faded out near the edge of the woods, and Cassandra, Vex, and Keyleth were alone again. Rather than taking the closest tree to the house, they walked back along the beach to watch the night roll in.

They followed the usual path, the greenery getting ever darker around them, until they came over the crest of land and finally emerged from the dense forestry separating the town from the beach. The sun had just dropped behind the sharp line separating sky from sea, visible for just a moment in the otherwise rainy evening. Light’s last efforts cast the horizon a deep cherry that slowly faded upward into orange, then yellow, and then nothing. During the day, the ocean was the iconic blue of the tropics, crystal clear for fathoms. Now it was a reflection of the sky: red, and then navy, and then inky black.

Miraculously, they made it back to the house without incident. The enchanted fans turned in smooth, even circles, lifting the air and leaving it cool. Inside the house it was dark and quiet. Vex led the way through, laughing when she heard Keyleth nearly trip and fall behind her. Vex had forgotten the location of the lantern.

“Wan’ me to light up my hands?”

“No, Keyleth, you’ll burn the house down!”

Keyleth took some persuading, but eventually channeled her enthusiasm into making them a bonfire outside, where they sat for several more hours with snacks from the pantry, until Cassandra started to doze. She excused herself from the conversation and felt her way up the stairs, pulling herself along the bannister until she reached the blissful quiet of her bedroom. She fell asleep thinking of a teenage girl who loved to dance.

That girl was still on her mind the next day, when Cassandra woke far too easily considering the size of her hangover. But last night had given her a lot to think about, and strangely, despite the headache, the resolve to think about it.

Cassandra dressed and tucked her notebook into her pocket before tiptoeing downstairs. She was surprised when she reached the kitchen and found Vex there—hair a mess, bent over the kettle—and Keyleth, passed out on a chair with her feet propped up on Trinket’s back.

“What time is it?” Cassandra whispered.

“Almost noon,” Vex said, her expression pained. Her voice sounded as raw as Cassandra’s throat felt.

“Did you two make it to bed last night?”

Vex shook her head. “I consider it a success that I didn’t wake up covered in vomit.”

“I don’t suppose you’d like to join me for a walk?” Cassandra asked, knowing the answer well before Vex confirmed it with a look. Cassandra offered a sympathetic smile.

“I’ll be back in a little while,” she said.

“Want some tea for the road? There’s extra in the pot.”

“That would be lovely, actually.”

Cassandra set off along the beach, sipping hot black tea from yet another of the house’s mysterious antiques: a glazed mug with intricate designs sculpted into the clay. She put deliberate effort into observing the details of the morning, from the light citrus of the tea to the grey hue cast by the clouds. The storm had moved on, yet its effects lingered in the rough surf, steely skies, and the wetness of the sand. She reached the cliffs that Vex and Keyleth had showed her. She slipped a little as she began to climb the rocks, one-handed with the mug, checking her pocket every so often to make sure she hadn’t lost anything.

At the top, she sat on the edge, smoothed out her skirt, and took out the notebook. It sat on her lap for several minutes while she listened to the sound of the sea moving around below. When she’d come up a few days ago, it had lapped up against the rocks in a lazy, pleasant mantra. She had been able to look straight down and see the pebbles and fish toward the bottom. Now, when she peered past the drop, all she saw was tumult. The storm had churned the water, making it murky with silt and seafoam. Waves threw themselves against the cliffside, sending a spray that almost reached her dangling feet.

Carefully, Cassandra set the mug aside and took up the notebook. She didn’t open it, but held it loosely in her hands. The pages had been calling to her for days—not the increasingly desperate entries following her capture and imprisonment. The ones before that.

She opened to the first page, and began to read aloud. It seemed important, at that moment, that she hear the words in her own voice.

> _This journal is the property of Cassandra Johanna von Musel Klossowski de Rolo. Mother and Father gave me this book today as a gift for my birthday. Ludwig thought it was a joke, but he doesn’t understand that someone can enjoy books and the outdoors. He’s just boring. Hah!_

> _Anyway, Mother thinks that if I am to be out and about in town and the Parchwood, I ought to write down some of the things I see. Maybe I’ll accidentally solve a crime, or uncover an affair! That would be exciting. Tonight a show is happening at the Sun Tree, so I shall start there and report back with my findings._

Cassandra read each entry, in order, the sound barely carrying over the waves. This previous iteration of Cassandra was untamed, well-educated and knowledgeable in all the proper manners, but flippant in their exercise. One of the earliest entries chronicled her adventures in sneaking around the castle after supper, and her shock at overhearing a pair of housekeepers gossiping about Julius’s lascivious quests at a local brothel—in retrospect, relatively tame and ordinary pursuits. She cringed at some of the things written there, and the unpolished turn of phrase. But even the greatest embarrassment was overshadowed by a growing sense of protectiveness.

She was starting to get emotional. Cassandra read until her eyes clouded over and her already sore voice cracked, and she pressed on further. There were a dozen or so entries chronicling the life of this little stranger who loved to sing and provoke her siblings. A brat of a child, always sneaking off to leave her tutors wondering where she’d gone, but remarkably insightful. Cassandra loved her now more than ever as she watched the images pass through her mind, more like a series of vivid paintings than her own memories.

Finally—finally—she reached the date that she had been dreading:

> _We have guests! Yes, Father’s great bridge plans may actually be real after all. We have all teased him so badly, but he might just have the last word. The Briarwoods arrived today with half of Wildemount in their carriages. They do make an attractive pair. Lady Briarwood is so beautiful (and Lord Briarwood too). They have this charm about them that makes you feel like something exciting is about to happen. For me, that would be my new ballgown! I was so thrilled when Martha finished sewing it just in time. It is a lovely blue (of course) with white lace. Percy says it makes me look like a plucked peacock, but he is just sour because he looks like a child next to Father and Julius. I would wager that he has a little crush on the doctor that the Briarwoods brought with him. (She’s a scientist, Percy keeps reminding me.) Vesper set their places next to each other at the table to keep them both occupied at supper. Sadly, across from me! I’m sure they will be insufferable. Oh, Martha is knocking to do my hair now. I must remember to write down all of the excitement when I turn in for the night!_

Cassandra stopped reading. She had reached the first page that she’d read when she pulled the book up from the floorboards a few days ago—after she’d recovered from her near-death and fever following the escape attempt. The gap between the two entries seemed immeasurable.

She was weeping freely now, but she didn’t pause more than a few seconds to catch her breath. Now that she had come this far, she was bursting to say it. Cassandra flipped through the pages and watched the handwriting blow past her vision, start to end. They were all just words inside, of course, but there was something else. She had been trying to find the proper place to put this in her life. To give it the weight it deserved without letting it define her, because she refused to ignore it. She couldn’t if she tried.

“I know,” she said, the open book clutched in her hands. “I know it wasn’t _all_ my fault. I’ve spent the better part of a decade learning to believe it. But I… I’m sorry.”

The tears kept coming, and Cassandra didn’t try to stop them. In the days following the coup, she had mourned each of them: her mother, father, and all of her siblings. Even Percival, the only one whose corpse or murder she hadn’t witnessed firsthand—they had told her he’d been caught and drowned in the river for trying to flee. She’d cried for them all, and saved nothing for herself. It hadn’t been a selfless act; she simply hadn’t believed that she had reached the end. But it had been the end—or _an_ end—and that was the unbearable part.

She returned to the beginning and looked at the neat line at the top of the page. _This journal belongs to_ _Cassandra Johana von Musel Klossowski de Rolo_. She ran her fingers over the name, feeling the ridges embossed in the paper.

“It’s like you’re an entirely different person,” Cassandra said. “Like you’re someone I met once, a long time ago… a little girl I saw in town, who died with the rest of them. I’m sorry that I couldn’t protect you. And I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you. I promise I tried. But I forgot who I was, and by the time I remembered, it was… too late. Please forgive me.”

She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “I don’t think I shall ever see you again, as you were. But I miss you, and I love you, and I’ll do my best to make you proud.”

Cassandra stood, closing the book. She stared across the water without really seeing it, too focused on the thought. All of a sudden she felt strangely calm. The air seemed to invite her to speak, but with nothing left to say, Cassandra turned and started back to the beach house. The climb down was somehow more difficult than the climb up, what with the rainwater on the stones, and partway down, she realized that she had forgotten the mug she’d borrowed for her cup of tea.

“Naturally,” she sighed, with a pang of chagrin.

Back up she went, taking the same careful path she’d followed with Keyleth and Vex. The mug was right where she’d left it, empty but for a few loose dregs. She picked it up and dumped the rest of the liquid out, more out of habit than concern that she’d get it on her clothes. Then she turned to leave a second time, and her foot slipped out from under her.

Cassandra had the book in her right hand, and the mug in her left. But even if she’d had both hands free, she wouldn’t have had time to react. She flailed for several futile seconds as she realized that she had nothing beneath her but air and the angry gnashing of the Ozmit Sea.

Impulsively, she flung out an arm to catch a ledge as she went tumbling past it. The stone cracked against her elbow, striking her vision white with momentary pain. Her hand opened automatically and the mug flew out. _Smash!_ In the background, she heard the pottery skittering down the cliffside with her the whole way down. Too shocked to be afraid, Cassandra watched helplessly as the sea rose up to snatch her. She closed her eyes just before she hit the surface.

It was a sharp, painful landing as she smacked into it, but luckily, it was just water. Cassandra plunged down, ten feet, maybe more. She couldn’t tell. Her vision went dark immediately in the murky, storm-churned sea, and within just a second or two, she had no sense of up or down. She was tossed around, pushed and pulled in the rhythmic flow. The book was still clenched tight in one hand. Cassandra waved it madly, trying to use it as a paddle, feeling for a hard surface or a sandy bottom to right herself. She was dizzy from the fall, from the hit, from spinning and holding her breath.

 _Underwater breathing_ , she thought desperately. Yes, of course.

Fighting every instinct, Cassandra forced herself to draw a breath. When she did, the burn of seawater flooded her throat, her lungs. No breath. And suddenly, as her diaphragm seized, Cassandra remembered Keyleth, passed out on the couch, the power of her spell lapsed hours before.

She tried to swim through the dawning panic, but she couldn’t see, and there was nothing to grab onto. Just the darkness of the ocean in all directions, and the last few bubbles of air escaping from her mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All de Rolos are heretofore banned from the ocean.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end (of the fic) is nigh! 
> 
> Chapter content warnings: discussions of drowning (obviously), blood, injuries, etc.

Chapter 4

The pressure was mounting. Around her, the darkness pushed against her eyes and ears, like being wreathed in smoke. Inside her chest, there was a fire. Cassandra would have given anything for the ability to scream.

She had seconds, maybe less, before she began to drown in earnest. Vex had told her once what that was like. First comes the final burst of futile energy. Then your body goes limp, and you float, or sink, with no power over where. Then the images come, like fragments of your life as a final word of comfort. Then the blackness, the void, nothing at all. You die, and that’s it, unless you have friends nearby to pluck you out of the ocean and retether your soul to your body.

Cassandra had no one, not here. She was alone as she had been for months in that room, fighting off the fear that any day could be the last. This really was that day, wasn’t it? Even in her rising desperation, she still felt the book in her right hand, clutched in an automatic grip while she flailed. Down was up, and she was nowhere, and the muscles in her chest were straining to keep from coughing and taking in more water. The energy was starting to ebb out of her limbs, replaced by a growing heaviness.

Then something touched her foot. A fish? It touched her again. No. She was kicking it. A rock. Was she on the bottom? Cassandra focused every ounce of her draining brainpower on touching that rock. _Treat it like the surface._ _It’s up, swim up to it._ Somehow, she found it with her empty hand. It was a rock. A big one, like a boulder. And next to it, another, and—

She wasn’t on the bottom of the sea. She was sideways, at the base of the cliff. Conscious thought had been leaving her, but now it returned with a final spark. She had to climb.

Another wave pitched her to one side, then fought to drag her back in the current. All at once she thrust herself against the rock, grabbed hold with her arms and legs. She still didn’t know which way to the surface, but it was guess or die, so Cassandra began to move. The undertow made it difficult, but she couldn’t rest now. She pulled her weight up with both hands, leveraged herself with her legs, reached and pulled, again and again, until—

Light and sound exploded back to her senses as her head broke the surface. She was not where she’d started, but there were rocks below her, and grey sky above. Cassandra clawed her way onto the closest boulder, retching what seemed like gallons of seawater. The next wave hit her backside and knocked her face-first into the stone, but she wasn’t going anywhere. She was gripping the edges like she’d never get another chance.

Finally, the air came. Hacking and heaving, Cassandra pulled herself onto her knees and tried to catch her breath. Her eyes were streaming, but they had been burning before, and her hair stuck to her face, obscuring her sight. Her windpipe felt like someone had slit it all the way down to the base of her ribs. She was bleeding everywhere—her shins, her palms, her chin, the tops of her feet. Cassandra saw the swelling in her arm and realized that she’d probably broken it in the fall. But she didn’t care.

Cassandra could see the beach, a few rocks away. She crawled, or the equivalent of limping on her hands and knees with one arm starting to regain its sense of feeling. She made it just beyond the reach of the waves, and let herself collapse there. She didn’t move for some time. It was only once her breathing had simmered down, and she lay there with one cheek pressed into the hard-packed sand, that she noticed the book was gone.

* * *

Cassandra had an internal wager going over who would spot her first. Vex won out in the end.

“Cass!” The voice preceded Vex leaping off the front step and tearing up the beach to meet her, with a bedraggled Keyleth close behind, and Trinket at the rear. “What the _fuck?_ ”

On the longer than normal walk back to the house, the adrenaline had flattened out, and the feeling had fully returned to Cassandra’s broken elbow. She had it braced against her midriff when Vex and Keyleth fell upon her. Vex had just about thrown herself on her when she stutter-stopped at the sight of blood. There was quite a lot of it—not because she had any particularly remarkable cuts, just that the scrapes on her knees and hands and face had dribbled down across the rest of her.

“I’m fine,” she assured them, but she hadn’t tried speaking since going under, and the burning in her throat had her doubled over coughing as soon as the words came out.

Cassandra’s breathing eased as someone touched her shoulder and cast a healing spell. In an almost creepy way, she felt the bones shift in her arm, the injury healed. Cassandra straightened up to confront Vex and Keyleth’s matching expressions of wide-eyed shock.

“Thank you,” she said breathlessly, shaking out her arm in relief as Trinket licked the salt from her face. “Listen, I need a favor.”

“Whatever you need,” said Vex, her hand already at the small of Cassandra’s back, gently shepherding her forward.

“You ought to hear the terms before you accept…” Cassandra pulled up her shirt to show them the tattoo. “Can you remove this?”

Keyleth made a little noise that could have passed for a nervous laugh. “Not with magic.”

“I understand. But will you do it?”

“Um…”

Visibly dumbfounded, Keyleth and Vex exchanged a look. They shared a second or two of wordlessness before Keyleth took in a deep breath.

“Take her to the garden,” she said to Vex. “I’ll meet you there.”

Vex nodded, once. Then Keyleth turned and ran back towards the house, leaving the two of them to make their way around back, to where the druid-kept gardens overflowed with plant life. It was an abundance of colorful flowers and enormous tropical leaves, lush and full but not overgrown. Cassandra let Vex steer her to a bench by the central tree, where they sat for several minutes until Keyleth reappeared.

“We good?” said Vex.

Keyleth nodded. “Just need a few minutes. Let’s set up… Trinket, I left a cot folded up in the kitchen, could you grab it, please?”

In no time at all, they had assembled one of the more bizarre makeshift first aid stations that Cassandra had ever seen. She went inside to boil some fresh water, feeling somewhat like she was walking outside her own body. When she returned, the others had stepped away from the cot and implements to look at the enormous tree in the center of the garden. She watched as Keyleth raised her arm and drew it down the center of the tree, splitting it in a movement that Cassandra had seen a dozen times. Her momentary confusion dissipated when, seconds later, someone appeared from the other side.

Pike came jaunting through, dressed for the beach, a bottle of champagne in one hand and a whole pineapple in the other. She was wearing a pair of tinted glasses in bright gold (confirming to Cassandra that she herself was the last to get a pair).

She called out as the tree snapped shut behind her: “Who’s ready for brunch?”

Pike stopped short. Her eyes moved from Vex beside the cot, to Keyleth giving an awkward half-wave, and finally to Cassandra, covered in blood.

“Boy, you really do take the most interesting vacations.”

* * *

They had discussed for the better part of ten minutes whether to tie her down or not. Cassandra insisted (“The last thing I need today is to punch one of you in the face.”), so the others conceded. In the end, it wasn’t necessary.

Vex sat up by her head. Pike and Keyleth each took up a place on either side of Cassandra’s midriff. Trinket was sniffing the binds around her wrists with evident concern.

“Thank you, Trinket, but it’s quite all right. I need this.”

Pike had been testing the sharpness of her blade against the hull of a coconut, but now she wiped it off one last time and poised it at attention. “Last chance, Cass,” she warned.

“Do it. And if I tell you to stop, don’t.”

Vex put the strip of leather between Cassandra’s teeth. From that point, it was out of her hands. Her friends had their orders, and they delivered.

Whatever salve Keyleth had spread across Cassandra’s ribs did little to numb the pain. There was just a delay in sensation after the moment Pike began to move the blade across her skin, which might have just been a tribute to its well-honed edge. Cassandra had a dim recall of what it had felt like when Ripley sliced her leg open to test out the residuum fragment. She had been on some kind of sedative, then. In and out of consciousness, under the spell of a concoction that drained the movement from her body. This was different; she had full control of her faculties now.

Pike and Keyleth worked in tandem, and they had planned out the steps, but they had to move slowly. And there was no nicer way to put it: they were, essentially, flaying her alive. A repetitive mantra of slicing, scraping, and healing that had Cassandra biting down a harsh scream within seconds. She tried her best to keep still, but the pain was beyond imagination. Before long she was near-hyperventilating. Her heaving chest would only make it harder for Pike to cut quickly and precisely. Cassandra grasped the handles on either side of the cot, arms shaking with the effort of fighting to keep still.

She had hoped that her prior encounters would make the experience easier. She’d known pain before; how bad could it be this time, when it was at her own direction? But Cassandra had forgotten what real pain felt like—the kind that was more than a person could stand, the kind that induced surrender. Her vision fogged with tears and white hot agony. Cassandra prayed to pass out, but her stubborn consciousness kept holding on through the long minutes of intermittent, muffled sobbing against the bit. The others were talking, to her and each other. They assured her she was doing great, it would be over soon, but she only had the vaguest sense of understanding them. Their words all blended, and their voices.

Eventually, though, it stopped. The sounds of muttered spellcasting ended shortly after that. The acute pain disappeared, leaving her body in a state of general soreness. Vex removed the leather bit from her mouth.

Too spent to move, Cassandra lay there while the haze cleared. Gradually, she noticed that Pike was mopping up wet blood with a cloth. She could feel Vex’s fingers gently stroking her hair. Eventually, the three of them helped to stand her up on shaky legs.

“Let’s get you cleaned off,” said Vex from over her shoulder.

Cassandra wanted to thank them all, and to apologize for the trouble, but she didn’t have the chance. Vex led her into the house as she was still gathering her bearings, up the stairs, and into the washroom. She stood just outside the door while Cassandra stripped off her bloodied clothes and washed herself under the warm stream of the spigot.

Cassandra deliberately avoided looking at the mark on her ribs. She toweled off and dressed and let Vex fix her a place on the couch where Keyleth had spent last night. Cassandra lay down with the intention of a short rest, just to let her nerves calm down after the eventful morning.

She wound up spending several hours there. The others were in and out throughout the afternoon, spending most of their time in the sun. Cassandra dozed intermittently, the sound of their voices never too far from her. Trinket tucked himself against the couch and nuzzled the back of her hand where it dangled a few inches from the floor. Around suppertime, Cassandra sat up for a few bites of food when Pike came to check on her and examine the wound now that the blood was gone. The nod of approval told Cassandra enough, so she didn’t look to confirm it. Then she passed back out, and the next time she opened her eyes, it was dark.

Her body still felt dense with exhaustion. Cassandra got to her feet with impressively minimal stumbling and shuffled out of the house, stepping down from the kitchen through the seamless open walls and into the cool white sand. Pike and Keyleth had healed the wound, but her whole midsection felt tender and sore. She suspected it had to do more with her fall and struggle this morning than from the procedure afterwards.

There was a fire blazing down by the water, and she could hear the others talking, but didn’t see them. It took her longer than it should have to realize that they were all piled in the oversized hammock a little ways from the fire. The bottom of the hammock sagged dangerously close to the sand under their combined weight.

Keyleth was the first to notice her approach; her head popped up from the woven canvas to greet her. “Look who it is!”

As Cassandra came around the side, she found Pike and Vex lying alongside Keyleth beneath a blanket patterned with tiny armored bears. Vex jumped out at the sight of her and ushered her to join them.

Cassandra eyed the hammock with more than a hint of doubt. “One more and the whole thing is like to give way.”

“Grog uses this as his bed when he stays here,” Pike said conclusively.

They were right; the hammock creaked as Cassandra gingerly settled down between Keyleth and Vex, but held steady. Pike threw the blanket over all four of them.

“How’re you feeling?” Vex asked.

“Better, thanks to you all.”

“You mean like physically?” said Keyleth, “or like... existentially?”

“Both, actually.” Cassandra wiggled herself back and forth until she found something like a comfortable spot.

“We’ve been getting rather existential ourselves,” Vex went on, gracefully changing the subject. “Talking about the planes and the like. The stars. The gods. You know, campfire stuff.”

“You aren’t still scheming to teleport to Catha?”

“No,” said Pike. “Well—yes—but _this_ time, we were talking about life on other planets. What do you think about that, Cassandra?”

“Hmm…”

Cassandra looked up at the night sky and willed herself to see it for what it was—not the flat surface of a dome, but an expanse of endless depth. Knowing it was too much for anyone to conceptualize didn’t make her any less dizzy over it. So she shrugged. “Mathematically speaking, it seems likely.”

“Kind of freaky though, right?” said Vex.

“Isn’t it freakier to think that we’re the only ones out here?” Keyleth interjected. Cassandra caught a glimpse of Keyleth’s hand waving up in her periphery. “Look at all of that! How egotistical do we have to be to think we’re the only living beings in the universe?”

“That does make it sound pretty lonely,” said Pike.

“I suppose we could just ask,” said Vex.

“I dunno if that’s the kind of thing Sarenrae would talk to me about…”

“Why the fuck not? The gods made this world. I’ll bet Pelor would have a thing or two to say about it, right, Cass? That’s right up his alley. The dawn of creation and all of that.”

Cassandra sighed. “Honestly, at this point you would know more about that than me.”

They had never answered her before, and she didn’t see why that would change now. Cassandra was done talking to the gods. Swaying on the hammock a foot above the ground, tucked safely among arms and blankets, she didn’t need them anyway.

* * *

The loud crash of a wave woke her up in the morning. There were birds, too, chirping closer than they ought to be. The air was warm; it washed over her face in waves, like water. Cassandra felt movement, too, like she was floating in a lukewarm sea, or suspended in a cloud.

Cassandra opened one eye. She was still in the hammock, alone, the blanket half fallen off. The sun had come up, but her view of the blue sky was obfuscated by a tangled web directly overhead. Confused, she blinked and sat up on an elbow to find herself beneath an overhang of vines that had not been there the night before. Large green leaves had sprouted in a canopy over the hammock, protecting her from the sun.

She was tired still, but not _as_ tired, and the ache had diminished. Cassandra slipped a hand under her shirt and skimmed over where the mark had been. A hint of tenderness flared up when she pressed her fingers down, but otherwise nothing—no lines or bumps beyond the natural ridges of her ribcage. Cassandra fell back and watched the light flicker through the gaps of Keyleth’s druidcraft as her makeshift bed swayed side to side. She stayed there for a while, listening to the wind and the water and the flamboyant tropical birds. When she was finally ready, she pulled up the hem of her shirt to inspect their handiwork.

The tattoo was gone. In its place was a deep red mark, like a burn or a smear of paint. She’d seen enough wounds to know that after a few days of healing spells, that would dissipate, too. Cassandra took a deep breath and let it out, slowly. She climbed off of the hammock and out from under the vine growth.

No one greeted her when she stepped up into the house, shaking the sand off her feet. Everything was perfectly still, except for the fans turning lazily overhead. Then Cassandra heard a quiet laugh that she recognized as Vex. She padded down the corridor in the direction of the sound, until she drew close enough to make out the words:

“—you shouldn’t talk like that when you can’t deliver—”

Not wanting to eavesdrop, Cassandra rounded the corner and spotted Vex alone in the room, sitting on one far end of the couch with her legs tucked in and a cup of something steaming cradled against her chest. Cassandra glanced around to see who she was talking to, then noticed that Vex had two fingers to the side of her face, touching the earring.

Vex was smirking, but her face brightened at the sight of Cassandra standing in the doorway. “Hey, guess who just woke up?” A pause. “Yeah. She looks like a zombie.” Another pause. “Of course.”

Vex fumbled with the earring for a moment before it came free in her hand, and she held it out to Cassandra.

“He wants to talk to you. There’s just a few minutes left on the spell.”

Cassandra stepped forward to take it from her. As she did, she gave Vex a questioning look. _Did you tell him?_ she mouthed. Vex shook her head, still smirking in that almost mischievous way, one eyebrow cocked as if to say, _where would I even start?_

Cassandra turned away with the earring, clipping it into place as she walked off without any specific destination. “Good morning, Percival—or evening for you, isn’t it?”

“Yes, thank all the gods.”

It was odd to hear his voice in her ear, clear enough that he could have been standing right next to her. “Bad day?”

“Not at all. Just—” he made a half-groan that told her he had just sat down—probably for the first time in hours, by the sound of it, “—a long day. There was a bit of an incident, so I called to let Vex know ahead of time, so she wouldn’t be surprised…”

Cassandra had reached the back garden. “What is it? Is everything all right?” she asked, concerned.

“Everything’s fine,” said Percy, his tone bearing a slight lilt of embarrassment. “But… do you remember when we were children, and you cut your hair with a pair of kitchen shears?”

“Oh no. Which one of them?”

“Vesper, of course,” he said, as if it were obvious (which, in hindsight, it was). “When I heard the screaming, I thought someone had been stabbed, but I think it was just reality sinking in on her.”

The cot was gone from the garden, along with all the blood. Cassandra started an unhurried walk along the path, toward a bench she spied partially overtaken by a hibiscus bush.

“So what did you do?”

“I fixed it. Or I tried to. And I showed her the proper way to use a set of hair clippers, but I think the allure’s worn off for her.”

“I’m sure it has,” Cassandra laughed. “I don’t _really_ recall much about cutting my own hair as a child, but I do know that I only did it once. How’s it look?”

“Short. _Very_ short—it was hard to get it nice and even,” Percy said, amused. “I thought perhaps she might look a little more like me this way. But you know something funny?”

“What?”

“It’s so strange… after I evened it out, I took a step back to see how I’d done. And it shocked me, but… she looked just like you at that age. I thought I was having a flashback.”

Cassandra sat down on the bench. A little shiver had stolen up the back of her neck. “I don’t suppose it will be the last of our similarities,” she said warily.

“We should be so lucky.”

“We’ll see about that,” she said, after a pause to clear her throat. “Tell me, how are things on the council?”

“Don’t worry about the council,” Percy said dismissively. “I want to hear more about what you’ve been up to over there in paradise. For the next—” there was a pause as he presumably checked the time on his wrist, “—two and a half minutes.”

“Oh, you know… unwinding, mostly.”

“Vague, but fair enough. And the others have been on their best behavior, I hope? By which I mean their very worst behavior.”

Cassandra laughed again, softer this time. She tilted her head to touch the earring, and looked off past the blooming gardens, in the direction of the house.

“You know,” she said lightly, “I think I understand why you love them so much.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that was fun! ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ Life is weird. But this was a fun adventure and thank you for joining me on it!! Many, many thanks to those who left kudos or words of encouragement. See ya'll next time. <3


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